


Don't Look Down, Don't Look Back

by oppressa



Category: Black Sails
Genre: F/M, Mild Blood, Pre-Series, References to Past Physical Abuse, Self-Mutilation, Threats of Violence, Young Jack, implied underage sexual activity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-05
Updated: 2016-05-05
Packaged: 2018-06-06 08:40:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6747007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oppressa/pseuds/oppressa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A possible origin of Jack's scars shown in episode VI. Warnings in the tags.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don't Look Down, Don't Look Back

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lilysmum](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilysmum/gifts).



> This is for my lovely friend because a while back we were talking about how Jack might've got the scars on his arm in season one, episode six where him and Anne are in bed together and it's a good time to write something for her. I hope that isn't too much of an obscure thing to post for everyone.
> 
> Warning for self-harm, mentions of Anne's abusive marriage and possible underage sexuality in case the tagging wasn't clear, I just didn't think the Archive warnings covered it. Oh and there is also a mention of Jack's father disciplining him physically as a child. Please give this a miss if reading about any of those things might be upsetting. Thank you.

Jack walks among the masses in Nassau and cultivates his difference from them, day by day. He has nothing more than they do in the way of personal effects, can't afford more from the women in the whorehouse. But he's destined for greater things, he knows that much. They will talk about him, in the way they speak of Avery, Teach, and the last captain to have made a name for himself, Charles Vane. It'll take time, and he can't go about ensuring it with force, with his fists, still, he has absolutely no doubt that his mind will suffice.

He's seen what you've got to do to survive here. Men have been killed in front of him and he's narrowly escaped the same fate. He has been pinned against walls and been spat on and insulted, thumped into near-senselessness and had knives held to his throat. It isn't luck that he's come out of those one-sided confrontations alive, that he gets shoved away again, with a perfunctory sneer of _Fuck off, Rackham_. It's his tongue that gets him into such situations, but it also gets him out of them, all the same.

It's obvious why they don't like him, they don't particularly like anyone with more than shit for brains. He is well-spoken and slender and fair-skinned, when he first arrives from England, anyway, and they are rough, unwashed, tanned, scarred. _Branded_ , some of them. They say that of Vane. He attracts Jack's curiosity for a lot of reasons, the foremost being perhaps because they're about the same age, and Vane's _done it,_ he only has to look at someone for them to fall into reverent awe of him.

 

One day Jack manages to catch his wild blue eyes across the tavern, meets them on purpose and doesn't look away again. Vane raises an eyebrow at him, at the balls of that. He has no reputation, as of yet, and he's pretty sure Vane thinks nothing of him, certainly doesn't dwell on him after leaving the establishment with Teach. But at least he's seen him, now, he knows his face. And things change. He'll make them change.

He is approached by one of the serving girls, a thin one, with her tits hanging out, not that that distinguishes her in any way from the rest of them. She sits on his lap, grinds her arse into his prick, and his jaw hangs open as she kisses him. He hasn't even seen her before, he has no idea why she's decided to grace him with this display of over-familiarity.

“Cap'n Teach sent me to tell you.” She whispers in his ear, “You're bold for one so scrawny but you're onto nothing trying to get Charles Vane's attention. He's only thinking of you, and of your general well being, he said. Or if you don't care about that, keep going. It makes no difference, because you won't get anywhere.”

_Oh, won't he. _For some reason he didn't think Teach would be this crass, or that paranoid. Jack knows he's getting older, but still. It's interesting though, he could find a way to work with it. He doesn't throw the girl off, doesn't want to cause a scene in which he won't exactly look good. He only expresses his contempt in the way his nose wrinkles, as she stands.__

“Thank you, but I'm not going to pay you for that.”

“Aren't you strange.” She says, meaning she probably hasn't ever had anyone be as polite while refusing to compensate her for her services. “He paid already, since you wouldn't be able to. You don't even belong to any crew, do you?”

And it's the laughter that gets to him, ringing in his ears. Teach didn't stay around to witness his humiliation, why would he, but he can imagine the serving girl's laugh echoes his deeper, crueler, bastard sense of humour.

 

He goes back to the room where he sleeps, fuming inwardly, and loses control how he takes care not to in public, knocking some of his things from the table onto the floor, kicking them away to sit on the bed. Fuck Teach. Fuck Vane, if he doesn't see what Jack can offer him. There's only one thing they respect, just one way in which he'd aspire to be more like them. He has never spilled blood in a fight, his own or anyone else's.

He's no stranger to pain of course, he had his knuckles rapped on a fairly regular basis as a child or felt his father's belt for worse transgressions, sometimes he couldn't sit down for a week after. But he's never liked the sight of blood. It doesn't make him faint, but it's fucking close. If he has to get used to something traditional about being a pirate, he has to get used to that, it's _imperative_ that he does.

 

He's pretty calm now and his head is clear, he's only drunk enough to wash out the bad taste from Teach's cautioning of him, from the girl's tongue, unwelcome in his mouth. The rum should give him the courage to do this, but his arm still trembles of its own accord as he lifts the edge of the heated blade against the skin below his shoulder, watches the light play off it. He waits until he's able to hold it steady, wondering if he should do it quick or slow, make it jagged or smooth.

“God.” He murmurs to himself. “Just do it, Jack.”

He shifts to sit on his opposite hand and slashes into his shoulder and along his breastbone, long cuts deep enough so that they won't heal without leaving a scar. It fucking hurts like hell, of course it does, and it looks awful when he's finished, he takes some grim satisfaction in that, some pride he did it in near silence. Light-headed, he lets them bleed for as long as he can stand it, resisting the urge to stitch them. He just winds the bandages tight enough to stop the blood for now then dresses again, properly. He's not interested in showing them off. The point is that he'll know they're there, that they remind him he isn't afraid of the sharp end of a knife.

 

In later years they stand out white against the tan he eventually acquired. Anne likes them, it seems. She doesn't say as much but she'll often run her fingers over them, in a way he wouldn't touch her own scars for fear of crossing some unspoken line. He doesn't know her very well yet, although at the same time it's like he's known her forever. She is even younger than he was when he first came to Nassau, however, what he went through up to and after the death of his father pales into insignificance alongside what Anne's had to endure. Maybe he saw some of his old fear in her eyes. Or he just couldn't let her stay with that fucking dog. In either event, he found her, and nothing will ever be enough to tear them apart.

It feels so right being with her, in their bed, his body turned towards hers, his legs carrying on far longer. Anne sits slightly above him, the flat of her hand stroking up and down his bicep, then onto his chest, following the pale lines.

“You got skin like a girl.” She says. “All soft like that. Makes me wonder why the fuck you'd do this to yourself.” She says it lowly, with no judgement in her voice, yet his stomach lurches. He manages to stop his mouth from forming the words _How did you_ \-- but it seems she picks it up from his startled expression anyway. _Fuck._

“Jussa question, Jack. If someone did it to you I'll kill 'em, and if they're dead now then I'll dig them up and kill them again. But you did them with your own knife, didn't you?”

“Yeah, I did.” He just admits it, without even trying to bullshit her, as she'd call it. She has that sort of affect on him.

Anne smiles slightly, kisses his shoulder. “You can't hide nothing from me. So why d'you do that? To look tough in fronta Vane, or somethin'?”

He bridles, finally, because _no_ , he couldn't even get near Charles at the time. “I wouldn't put it that way, darling.”

“Then how would you put it?”

He's at a loss how to respond, which doesn't happen very often. He's supposed to be the one that saved her, who always knows what to say, in any given situation. He's supposed to be better at handling things than this.

_If you really want to know, the people around me didn't take me seriously, they were forever getting in my way, threatening me with everything under the sun. They were always going to make me pay for making them feel stupid, going to make me bleed from every fucking orifice. But that wasn't the worst of it, no. The worst was them thinking I'd never amount to anything, anything at all. Then one day there was this final straw and I had to do something about it, but I couldn't do it to them yet, so I did it to myself. I got there before they did, it made sense to me then, and I only regret doing it since I met you._

It's after a few moments pass, and she's looking at him with her head on one side, that he realises he's spoken out loud.

“Well, I don't blame yer. Not for that.”

“Why not?” She's got a right to, given the mass of scar tissue from a rope landing on her back.

“You're the only one who did something about my husband.” He stiffens, caught off guard again. She so rarely speaks of him, of Bonny. “You gave a shit. That counts for a lot.”

“All I really wanted was to get you on your own.” He laughs, though it isn't funny. Maybe he's embarrassed, maybe he's asking for it, he wants her to get angry with him, now, and Anne indulges him, grasping his chin in her hand and wrenching his neck back.

“I'll show you what that's like, shall I?”

He knows he isn't really being given a choice. His eyes are watering already, his cock is getting hard with what she fucking _does_ to him.

“Shall I, then?”

Christ, is she actually asking for his permission?

“Yes,” He snaps. “If it isn't going to take all fucking day.”

She smiles in a way that informs him she's going to drag it out as long as possible, that says _don't use that tone with me_. She doesn't tolerate shit from anybody any more, except on occasion from him, but not now. It's as if she just likes having him to play with, sometimes. He doesn't mind that, because Anne's doing it for his gratification as well as her own, like she instinctively knows what he wants, like she sees inside him.

“Don't make me start to see things from their side, Jack.” She says.

He quiets, softens his dark, pathetically tearful glare straight away, and is rewarded by the harsh, claiming press of her mouth on his.

**Author's Note:**

> “When I came here I had nothing, but my name and my wits. A man in a place like this surviving on those two things alone, he suffers indignities, slights, ridicule...but I overcame it, I used the wits to build the name.” Jack Rackham, Episode IX
> 
> “Don't treat me like I'm someone else. I'm on your fucking side of this, same as I've always been.” Anne Bonny, Episode XIX


End file.
